Given the incredible number of comments I received on my last blog post, and the content of those comments, it is very obvious that folks are extremely confused by what I meant by that post, as well as the comments by Mr. Garsthagen (Oracle Director Level Employee), referenced in that post.

The confusion is typified by the following comment, the most recent I have received:

Oracle does not recognize either (Vmware/DRS Affinity) as a hard partition

First, to be completely clear, I have never stated, nor do I believe, that VMware (or any other software hypervisor for that matter) (more...)

As all of my readers know, I have been a strong proponent of VMware virtualization of Oracle Database servers for license cost savings purposes. Predictably, Oracle has pushed back on this issue in the past. Well, they have now thrown in the towel.

In an online video, Richard Garsthagen, Director of Cloud Business Development EMEA for Oracle, has stated publicly that VMware host affinity rules (when combined with vMotion logging) work just fine, (more...)

As many of you have heard by now, Paul Mauritz is out as CEO of VMware, and Pat Gelsinger (formerly COO of EMC, reporting directly to Joe Tucci) is replacing him.

The relevant question for those of us who care passionately about Oracle virtualization using VMware vSphere is:

What does this mean for VMware's BCA (Business Critical Applications: stuff like Oracle) strategy (which under Maritz was somewhat lacking)?

In my view, this is very, very good news indeed. The reason is simple: Paul Maritz was former Microsoft, and thus very Microsoft-centric. Under Maritz, VMware very successfully penetrated the Microsoft (more...)

As my comment on Michael Webster's recent blog post entitled Fight the FUD – Oracle Licensing and Support on VMware vSphere states, I am in violent agreement with everything he says regarding Oracle licensing and support for VMware virtualization of Oracle database servers. I heartily recommend this blog post to everyone concerned with Oracle's recent behavior regarding VMware virtualization of their products.

The reason I believe this session is so important is simple: Every Oracle customer and his dog is desperately trying to get off of expensive, slow, proprietary RISC-based UNIX and onto the x86 environment. The reason for this desperation is simple: Cost. These environments are becoming hideously expensive platforms on which to run Oracle. Huge core counts. And performance is frequently terrible.

Let me start by bringing all of you into the courtroom. There are three issues that you will observe me as counsel provide to the jury as part of my allowed instruction (I am not an attorney in real life).

I offer the definitions in this paragraph only to make this post as self-sufficient as possible and not with intent (more...)

VMware has put a stake in the ground with respect to Oracle licensing of VMware VMs running Oracle. The gist of this statement regarding certification, support, and licensing is that DRS host affinity rules, combined with vCenter audit trails showing where VMs have actually run, are sufficient for Oracle licensing purposes. The summary of the document states:

DRS Host Affinity rules can be used to run Oracle on a subset of the hosts within a cluster. In many cases, customers can use vSphere to achieve substantial licensing savings.

vCenter VMotion Logging

I have received a fair number of responses to my previous post on this subject (some via comments and some via email). I thought the discussion worthwhile enough to punch it up a bit more here.

Backup

As I pointed out in the previous post, EMC can easily match NetApp's play to back up ExaData with the following:

As Geoff Rosser so correctly pointed out, this answer is incomplete. Yes, Data Domain is an awesome Oracle backup solution. Yes, it provides incredible deduplication rates for Oracle database environments. (Thanks, dynamox.) However, it is not the only viable solution from (more...)

There has been lots of material on the web recently concerning NetApp being able to backup ExaData. The purpose of this blog is to respond to that content, and state why NetApp's offering is rather lame, and actually offers nothing new.

The items on the web produced by NetApp are easy to find. I will not increase their Google hit rate by linking to them here. Suffice it to say, Neil Gerren's blog contains the principle content to which I will respond here. There is also NetApp technical report TR 4022, a 34 page tome, which I have read thoroughly. (more...)

Appliances such as microwave ovens, refrigerators, iPods, iPads and TVs are excellent examples of the ease-of-use approach. Bringing the inherently complex world of Oracle databases together with the ease-of-use approach of appliances is challenging. By definition if Oracle Exadata is an appliance then its use should be simple, require relatively little maintenance and like a refrigerator do its job which in this case is run databases at extreme performance levels. If Oracle Exadata isn’t an appliance than what is it?